


when it's all said and done

by Skyepilot



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Coulson doesn't have a great Poker face, Coulson's soft spot is Daisy, Daisy isn't great at hiding her feelings about Phil, Daisy rescuing Coulson, Drinking, Emotional Intimacy, F/M, Flirting, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Humor, Jealousy, Mack being caught in the middle, Mentions of Daisy kissing Lincoln, Skye | Daisy Johnson's Superpowers, Teasing, Too trusting forest animal Phil, Trust Issues, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 01:53:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5029162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skyepilot/pseuds/Skyepilot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 3x03 fic about jealousy and meta feels pretty much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when it's all said and done

“Coulson, I know you.”  
  
He gives her a weary look, as she follows him into his office.  
  
“Look, I get it,” she goes on. “But you’re too trusting.”

He stops to put the pad on his desk then turns to her, offended.

“That's not true,” he says, blinking, wondering whatever she could mean.

They’ve both been through a lot, and he can admit that some cracks are starting to show.  But even so, it’s not like he-

“Phil,” she continues, her voice slightly raised at the end of his name.  
  
“What?”

It sounds short, but then she’s just crossed her arms at him again.  
  
“Remind me how I got inside SHIELD?”  
  
“I know a great asset when I see one?”  
  
_“Really_?” she asks sharply, as he starts to smile.  
  
“Not like that,” he says, apologetically.  
  
“Then why are you smiling?”  
  
“To hide the fact that that sounded _really_ inappropriate,” he says with an awkward grin, and circles around his desk.  
  
“I know what you're doing,” she leans forward on the top with both hands as he sits.  
  
“Sure, I wanted to trust you, yes,” he finally admits.

She looks like she might concede now that he’s confessed.

“But I had May follow you,” he adds at the last.  
  
“After I had access to your entire plane _and_ your data,” she says, sitting on the edge now and throwing her hands up.

“You lucked out.”

“Okay _one_ example,” he allows. “I don't really think-“  
  
“Hunter?  Bobbi?  Mack?” she says, in quick succession.  
  
“What it sounds like,” he interrupts, “Is what you’re _really_ trying to say is that I'm actually a great judge of character under less than ideal circumstances.”

Her eyelids half shut, half flutter, and he’s pretty sure this conversation is done.

 

####

 

“You don't even know what these people want,” she says, walking beside him in the hallway, Mack hanging back while they have this discussion again. 

He glances over his shoulder at him.  Not even a blink.  

Staying out of it.  Probably _forever_. 

Sometimes it’s okay to take a side, is all he’s thinking.  
  
“That's what I intend to find out,” Coulson says, handing the pad to her as she glances at the display. “And they've invited me in through the front door.”  
  
“Yeah, I've seen the way she talks to you,” as she flips through it with her fingers. “More like the side door, or-“”  
  
“The point is,” he starts in, impatiently, after watching Mack give her an agreeing glance.  

“I didn't have to divert resources to do it. We've been trying to run up the middle when I should’ve called the draw.”   
  
She makes a face at his sports analogy.  
  
“Handing off the ball instead of throwing it?” 

“It's dangerous and I think you should reconsider it,” she says, stopping as they land at the ramp to the jet.  
  
“Noted,” he says with a nod to Mack as he heads inside.  
  
“I just get a bad feeling about this,” she says, lowering her voice.  
  
“Once they understand these are just people and not an alien invasion-“  
  
“Please tell me you don't actually believe that,” she says, with a sigh, as he touches his hand to her arm.  
  
“I mean the public,” he says quietly. “Not Price or the ATCU. That's what will shift the conversation.”  
  
“And historically? That only takes decades or centuries, even. I don't want to end up as someone's lab rat,” she says, walking up the ramp.  
  
“You won't,” he calls after her.  
  
“And I'm not helping them hunt down other people so they can be lab rats, either.”  
  
“That won't happen. Only people who are using their gifts to harm. That was the deal.” 

“You can’t promise that,” he hears her say as she moves out of his sight line. 

 

####

  
He's looking over her wound in the lab.  
  
“You’re such a soft touch.”  
  
He hides his smile, and gets to the more serious work of tending to her injury.  
  
“All I had to do was bat my eyes and tell you how cool you were.”  
  
“Wrong,” he says, trying to not seem so pleasantly surprised, and steering it more towards pleasantly put off. 

They’ve just crossed paths with Lash again, and this time he managed to get a hand on her and escape SHIELD and the ATCU. 

“What, then?” she asks.

And he can feel her eyes on him, even though he’s picking up the gauze and the hypo spray with his good hand.  
  
“You were sharp. Idealistic. And most of all, you wanted to help Mike. That counted for a lot.”

“And what about ‘Rosalind’?” she asks, the name sounding bitter in her mouth as she winces a little at the spray.  
  
“She wants results,” he says, cutting the gauze. “There's another angle, and I'm working on it.” 

He starts to wrap her arm to protect the burn, grateful it wasn’t too severe. 

“Although, I don't seem to remember you getting quite so bothered when Talbot and I were on a first-name basis.” 

“You weren't going to work for Talbot.”  
  
“That reminds me,” goes on, putting the materials away.

“The other day before we were interrupted. You were going to tell me something about Lincoln.” 

He looks up to her and meets her eyes, sees them flutter slightly.  
  
“I was?” she asks innocently.  
  
“I'm happy to continue that conversation,” he says, his hand resting next to where she’s sitting on the table. 

She pulls her lower lip into her mouth and concedes with a nod.  
  
“Lincoln didn't want to come with us.”  
  
Clearly.  But he just narrows his eyes a little at her reluctance and lets her continue.  
  
“And I might have said and _done_ ,” she hesitates for just a moment. “Some things to convince him.”  
  
“Might? Are you not sure?” he asks, leaning forward a little.  
  
“He liked me, okay?” she admits. ”When we were in Afterlife, he made a few small _overtures_.”  
  
“As in?” he digs.

And she looks at him intensely, like she’s expecting this to all make sense.   
  
“We needed him to come with us and talking wasn't working,” she spells out. 

“When I said I thought you took this personally that's not quite what I-“  
  
“It was just some kissing,” she says, shaking her head.  
  
“It's fine,” he answers, as she hops off the table.  
  
“You don't _look_ fine,” she replies, and he realizes he’s frowning, and swallows.  
  
“How so?” he asks, raising his eyebrows, and giving her his blankest expression.  
  
“This is _exactly_ why I'm concerned about you working with Price,” she says. 

He tracks her as she leaves the room, and throws out “I can handle it.” 

To the door.  


####

 

He's sitting next to Mack on the couch. 

They're playing Call of Duty. 

It’s good therapy if you don’t like talking much.  
  
“You're getting better with the hand,” Mack says, glancing over at his left arm with the sleeve rolled up.  
  
“Thanks,” he says, biting on his lower lip in concentration as they work as a team. 

“Were you ever going to tell me about Lincoln?”  
  
“Nope,” Mack says, seemingly disinterested, thumbs working on the controller.  
  
“She told you, huh?” he asks, a few seconds later.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I thought I was done being the middleman,” Mack says, shaking his head.  
  
“I wasn't trying to-“ Coulson starts in defensively.  
  
“Just don't need extra drama. We've got plenty of that already,” Mack chides him.  
  
“Agreed.” 

The controllers are the only noise in the room since they’ve been playing with the game on mute. 

“She played him,” Coulson says suddenly, feeling convinced. ”That's kind of...impressive, right?”  
  
“Would've worked if ATCU hadn't interfered,” Mack says with a sigh.  
  
“That good, huh?”  
  
“I'm not here to give you a play-by-play,” he says, tipping his chin towards the screen.  

“Hey, you're falling behind, man.”  
  
“Sorry,” Coulson says, concentrating harder.  
  
“It sounded pretty impressive,” Mack says with a smile.  
  
“There were sounds?” Coulson asks, turning to him, forgetting the game entirely.  
  
“What she _said_ to him,” he clarifies. “She's good at this.  Trying to do something good.  You should trust her.”  
  
“I do.” 

 

##### 

 

“You’re up late.”

He passes by the doorway and stops to see her sitting on the couch, drinking a beer with the pad on her lap.

“Told you not to wait up.”

It sounds a bit more snarky than he intended, so he walks in and she takes her feet off the couch before he can plop down on them.

“Have you been drinking?”

“A little.”

The jacket gets tossed over the arm of the couch and he leans his head back against the sofa, closes his eyes.

“A little a lot?” she teases.

When he just turns his head to look at her and sighs, she nods and takes a drink of her beer.

“I’d just like to have a real conversation, that’s all,” he says, sounding exhausted.

“Mmm,” she agrees, looking a little pleased at the thought.

He figured she would.

Dinner with Price had ended in the bar, and he’s a little drunk and not the fun kind.

“Silence is good, too,” he says, looking up at the ceiling.

“Had a quiet evening, thanks for asking. Although, I just ate leftover pizza.”

“I had this deconstructed chocolate smores thing for desert.  That was great.”

“Sounds right up your alley,” she answers, settling against the arm of the couch and crossing her legs.

“Actually, it made me think of you,” he said, smiling with nostalgia for a moment. 

“When we were at the Retreat, that joke you made. Things were sort of simpler, I guess.”

He turns to look at her and she’s quietly eyeing him, something unreadable in her eyes.

“Then, maybe-“

“What?” he asks, when she hesitates.

Turning to her, elbow on the back of the couch, he’s resting his head against his hand, leaning towards her.

“Thanks for thinking of me.”

“I think of you,” he says, when she gets up to toss her beer into the bin.

“When you’re on a date with ‘Rosalind’?” she teases over her shoulder and heads towards the door.

“It wasn’t a date,” he calls after her.

 

####

 

When it’s all said and done it’s just the two of them again.

This feels familiar, somehow, as the feeling starts to come back in his hands and feet.

She got the cords around him worked loose, and she’s talking to him.

The world suddenly seems less dark and closed in.

And final.

“You okay?”

“Yes,” he says, and finds himself stumbling as he tries to stand up out of the space in the floor.

“I’m going to help you out of here,” she says, steadying him.  “Let me know if anything’s hurt.”

Her arm goes up underneath his and around his back, and he finds himself leaning against her, his face finding a spot where it touches her jaw.

Where he can feel her warmth.

He tries not to hold on too hard.

“We’re good,” he says, breathing out, now that he’s on his feet and they’re moving forward in the dark.

“How can you see?” he asks, but then it clicks.

“Vibrations,” she says anyway.  “I can do it like sonar, unless, I can really concentrate on listening.”

They fumble for a second, and her other hand moves to steady his chest, keep him from falling forward.

“Which, right now,” she says, her voice shaking. “Not so much?”

He knows how she found him.  How that must have felt for her.

“So, I guess right now would be a really terrible time to ask you out.”

“You’re so ridiculous,” she answers, holding back a laugh.

But at least she's smiling.  He can tell.

“And grateful," he adds.

“Sure,” she says.  

"Took you long enough."

 

####

 

I guess you could say things have settled down.

If by that you mean going completely dark and having a secret hideout?

The base was sort of a secret hideout, he thinks, but this is definitely not a base.

This time, he asked her to pick out the tile.

 


End file.
